Challengers

Airbus Defence and Space

Airbus Defence and Space is a division of Airbus Group responsible for defence and aerospace products and services. It has a major presence in Spain, and is in charge of military transport aircraft, ranging from the CN235 and C295 tactical transport aircraft, to the multi-role tanker transport (A330MRTT) and A400M airlifter. Airbus DS develops and integrates these aircraft and specific military systems, as well as industrialises, markets and sells this product line. The business unit also provides global support and services to customers and operators of its aircraft. The Centro Bahía de Cádiz (CBC) factory, located in Cádiz, manufactures components in carbon fibre by means of Fiber Placement (FP) and Automated Tape Laying (ATL) for aeronautic programmes including the A400M and A330 MRTT. With 325 employees, the site covers 79,000 square metres including 35,000 square metres of buildings. The company is very interested to analyse the application of aerial robots in their manufacturing processes and will help in the definition of the requirements and provide very valuable feedback to the development team.

Airbus DS acts as an End User in the GRVC-CATEC Team and is interested in the validation of a logistic system approach benefiting from the use of autonomous aerial robots due to the flexibility and automation degree they provide. The main role of Airbus DS will be to define the operational requirements of the solution to be implemented and provide the Challenge Team with inputs regarding the constraints of the logistic procedure and guidelines to implement critical functionalities like the interaction between the aerial robot and the workers.

Airbus Group as Airbus DS parent company is committed with the introduction of new technologies to solve the factory of the future paradigm. Several initiatives are being taken to improve competitiveness and productivity. Airbus has participated for example in ICARO project to develop industrial collaborative assistant robots capable of safely interacting with humans and evolving in dynamic environments. Another example is the VALERI project for the validation of advanced, collaborative robotics for industrial applications including mobile manipulators for aerospace production. Other projects related to the automation of assembly and production processes of Airbus DS are DIANNA, related to the robotic automation of verification and inspection systems, and FSP20, related to the automation of aircraft ground tests.